


In It Wait

by Lomedet



Category: Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette - A Companion to Wolves
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Lferion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 11:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomedet/pseuds/Lomedet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks beyond thanks to Petra, for her gentle but thorough beta.  Also to Lferion, for giving me an excuse to re-immerse myself in this magnificent universe.</p>
    </blockquote>





	In It Wait

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks beyond thanks to Petra, for her gentle but thorough beta. Also to Lferion, for giving me an excuse to re-immerse myself in this magnificent universe.

The first night after Isolfr left, neither Skjaldwulf nor Vethulf got more than an hour of sleep, snatched in minutes as they spelled each other - one resting while the other watched over an inconsolable konigenwolf and the two consorts trying their best to console her.

The second night, Mar roused Skjaldwulf from the nest of furs the two of them had made for themselves and herded his half-asleep brother into a pile with Kjaran, Vethulf and Viradechtis. Skjaldwulf awoke in the morning stiff and sore, and somewhat startled by the ease with which Kjaran and Mar were snuggled in on either side of Viradechtis. Over the pile of furry bodies between them, he caught Vethulf's eye and was rewarded with something between a grin and a grimace as his red-headed co-jarl stretched out his own stiffness after a night on the cold floor.

The third night, through a seeming conspiracy of wolves, Skjaldwulf and Vethulf lay down for the night with just enough space between each of them and their brothers to permit Viradechtis between them. This time, though, Mar and Kjaran took the outside edges, leaving the wolfjarls to try and sleep around the paws and elbows of a restless konigenwolf. In the morning they awoke not only stiff and sore, but bruised.

Later that morning, as he was rubbing medicinal smelling salve into Skjaldwulf's purplest bruise, Vethulf said, "This can't go on."

Skjaldwulf cocked an eyebrow at him, saying nothing. Vethulf sighed in exasperation, "It would be a lot easier to be your, your co-jarl if you could ever be bothered to string more than two words together at time. When, that is, you talk at all."

"What would you have me say, brother?" Skjaldwulf kept his tone mild, not wanting to set off Vethulf's temper. He knew the other man well enough to know that if they slid from conversation into wrangling, nothing good would come of it.

"Anything, so that you speak." Vethulf was pink-cheeked with some emotion, but there was no edge to his words.

Still in that same mild voice, Skjaldwulf asked, "What did you mean, 'this can't go on'?"

Vethulf let out a short, sharp bark, something that might have been laughter, if the man's expression had been a hair more relaxed. "I was referring to our sleeping arrangements - we'll be no good to werthreat or wolfthreat if we're waking unrested and bruised."

"How long do you think this will go on?" Skjaldwulf was honestly curious - he hadn't had much spare energy to think beyond the moment, but now that he thought about it he couldn't see an easy resolution to their situation. Barring, of course, any number of things that were beyond their control.

Vethulf sighed, "I don't know. But Kjaran and Mar seem to have settled in for a good long while." He cast a fond, if exasperated, look at the pile of wolves in the corner - if not for the difference in fur color, it would have been impossible to see where Viradechtis ended and her consorts began. "It only makes sense that we should make them, and ourselves, as comfortable as possible. At least until -" Here he stopped, clearly uncomfortable with where his thoughts had taken him.

Skjaldwulf could guess what the other man had been about to say. "Until Isolfr comes back. Yes. Until then, we need to figure out what to do. With them, and with each other."

He knew he'd misspoken when he saw Vethulf bristle. He thought about what he'd just said and how Vethulf had probably taken it, and winced internally, for once in his life not so grateful for the forthrightness of wolves. He heard Kjaran let out a quiet growl and braced himself for an explosion of temper.

"With each other? You mean besides trying to keep a konigenwolf from starving herself and her pups out of grief, running a heall that suddenly has two wolfjarls and no wolfsprechend, and trying to figure out how we're going to win this war, you want us to take the time to negotiate a treaty between ourselves? Isolfr's not even here - time enough when he gets back for us to decide how he's going to share out his time."

Skjaldwulf tensed at Vethulf's last words and said, "Isolfr's time is his own, and will continue to be. If you don't see that, you're not half the wolfcarl I'd taken you to be."

The ugly flush on Vethulf's cheeks clashed remarkably with his hair. His voice was uglier as he said, "And you mean to tell me you're not planning to bed him as soon as he gets back from whatever this daft mission is that he's set himself?"

The next thing Skjaldwulf knew, Vethulf was on the floor, his own knuckles stung, and Mar and Kjaran were facing off on either side of Viradechtis, growling.

He took a deep breath and looked coolly at Vethulf, and Vethulf's bleeding nose, "Go see about getting something for your injury. I'll be out in the bathhouse."

He walked away without looking back.

After the bathhouse, Skjaldwulf made himself busy around the heall. He successfully avoided Vethulf until the evening meal, and even then they found themselves at opposite ends of the long table. That night, he settled himself alone against the wall alone. He might not be speaking to the man, but he couldn't begrudge Viradechtis the comfort of her consorts. It was odd, though, trying to sleep without Mar's breath in his ear, without the steady rhythm of his brother's heart drumming him to sleep.

Sleep itself evaded him, and he was restlessly drowsing when he heard the pad of wolf paws and opened his eyes to see his brother looking at him, concern and impatience warring with each other in his gaze. Skjaldwulf sighed, stretched, and got up, heading without thinking about it to the corner where Viradechtis was curled up with Kjaran. And Vethulf.

The pattern continued for the next few days. Skjaldwulf and Vethulf spent the days as far apart from each other as possible - wherever one was, the other took pains to be elsewhere. Except for yelling at Isolfr's idiot friends, and telling off Grimolfr when he tried to make excuses for their wayward wolfsprechend - those things, they did both separately and together. At night they slept in a pile with their wolves, but if they were stiff and sore in the morning they sought out other hands to help them ease their muscles.

Eventually, something would have to break, but Skjaldwulf was just stubborn enough to know that it wasn't going to be him.

The fourth day after Skjaldwulf's fight with Vethulf, Isolfr's shieldbrother Sokkolfr came in search of him. He had to admit he was impressed by the younger man's bravery -even after the way he and Vethulf had torn strips from his skin with their words, Sokkolfr didn't seem to think twice about sitting down next to him. Hroi greeted Mar with a 'hruf' and immediately commenced cleaning the younger wolf's ears. Skjaldwulf felt Mar's pleasure in the attention, and smiled to himself at his brother's trust in his old companion. He reached into the pack-sense, and felt Hroi's concern for Mar, for this strange situation of two consorts and one konigenwolf, and Hroi's brother's reflected concern for his two wolfjarls.

Skjaldwulf let the silence spin out, knowing that the younger man would say what he had to say eventually. "He didn't leave because of you, you know." Sokkolfr said, keeping his gaze focused on the leather harness he had brought with him.

"Oh?" Skjaldwulf said, raising an eyebrow at him and then turning back to his own work. He deliberately ignored the emotions that rose in him at Sokkolfr's words, ignoring as well Mar's worry hovering in the back of his mind.

Sokkolfr sighed. "No. He was going somewhere specific, not running away."

Skjaldwulf said nothing, turning the idea over in his mind.

Sokkolfr continued, sounding more and more resolute with every word, "But you - the both of you - can't keep doing whatever it is that you're doing. The pack is fraying around the edges, and we weren't that strong to begin with."

"And what is it, exactly, that I am doing?" Skjaldwulf kept his tone neutral, although he could feel the anger he'd been pushing away- at Isolfr, at Vethulf, at Grimolfr, at himself - climbing up his throat.

Sokkolfr looked at him, the censure in his eyes as direct as any he'd ever seen from a wolf, "You're trying to be the only jarl of this pack, and so is Vethulf. I don't know what Viradechtis had in mind when she made the choices that she made, but this clearly wasn't it. The two of you need to figure out how to lead us, together, or it's all going to come apart."

Skjaldwulf bit down hard at the bile he felt upon being spoken to this way by a _puppy_. He hadn't wanted to be wolfjarl, but now the job was his, and he'd be damned if he was going to let himself be schooled in it by a boy whose beard was barely grown in and a wolf who -oh. He stopped himself and looked at Hroi. The older wolf was gazing at him calmly, as if he was secure in the knowledge that Skjaldwulf was going to figure this out eventually. He barked a laugh and, without a word to Sokkolfr, got up and went in search of his, for lack of a better word, co-jarl.

Vethulf was honing an axe when Skjaldwulf found him. He turned at the sound of his name, put the weapon down, and followed Skjaldwulf only a little grudgingly as he walked into the roundheall. It was, thankfully, relatively empty.

Mar went to join Kjaran and Viradechtis by the fire. Skjaldwulf watched as the three of them settled easily into each other, and spared a moment to wish that the same were possible for their human brothers. Right now, though, he'd be thankful for an end to open warfare.

Skjaldwulf looked at Vethulf, and saw his own exhaustion and loneliness reflected there. It came to him then, a start to making all of this right. He felt Mar's approval like the warmth of the fire on his own back. "You were right, you know," he said.

"Right about what?" Vethulf sounded more weary than anything else, and that alone told Skjaldwulf that it was past time for this tear to be mended.

"When you said we needed to figure out sleeping arrangements. The three of them might be comfortable with things as they are," he cast an affectionate eye over the wolves, "but I think that we could convince them to be happy with slightly softer bedding."

"What did you have in mind?"

"I thought we could take two of the beds from the titheboys' dormitory and lash them together. There'd be enough room for both of us and all of the wolves."

Vethulf took a breath. "And when Isolfr gets back, what then?" Skjaldwulf raised an eyebrow at him, and Vethulf let his breath out all at once, "Yes, of course. Isolfr will sleep wherever he and that great big girl of his want. Was that the right answer?"

Skjaldwulf let himself smile at the other man, counting it as a win when Vethulf began to smile back. When Vethulf said, "Our luck to get stuck not only with each other, but with the most difficult wolfsprechend in all the Iskryne, eh?" he even laughed.

"Come on," he said, something like affection curling within him as he looked at his co-jarl, "let's make all of us a place to sleep."

  
 _Ample make this bed.  
Make this bed with awe;  
In it wait till judgement break  
Excellent and fair.  


Be its mattress straight.  
Be its pillow round;  
Let no sunrise' yellow noise  
Interrupt this ground.

_  
-Emily Dickinson  


  



End file.
